As I’ve written before I believe Computer Vision will become a major factor as a Human-Computer Interface (1) as sensors and cameras help us make sense of our physical world. There is so much in the media about “The Internet of Things” that it has lost meaning and for many for some strange reason it became a short-hand for wearables. Wearables are clearly an important market but to me a much broader use case is bringing real-world objects into the computing world and there is no better mechanism than Computer Vision. [ 1511 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/…/computer-vision-tracking-flow-p…/

In anticipation of the upcoming SaaStr Annual 2017, we’ll be releasing the full series of transcripts and videos from all the awesome 2016 sessions. There are rules in starting an enterprise software company. You will fail if you: 1) try to build a suite of products out of the gate, 2) focus solely on SMBs, or 3) have an MBA. [ 6917 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/…/dharmesh-shah-hubspot-day-0-ipo…/

In my first start-up, I was mostly hunting whales — seven figure and eight figure deals. I had no experience doing any of this. For our First Big Customer, we’d been negotiating a $6m/year contract for quite some time (they always take time). We finally had the “all hands” meeting with all the C-level and VP execs involved. And they told us the deal was completely approved, AND they’d back us in the market, AND they’d even give us $1m in debt financing to help us. [ 234 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/55190/first-big-sales-deal/

Part of my job when I invest in a start-up is to get folks excited about the company. It’s not that hard. Because I am genuinely excited. Or I wouldn’t make the investment . And part of the picture I try to paint for the The Next Investor is where they’ll be in 12-18 months. E.g., “Well, RainforestQA is at $5m ARR and has grown 14.20309% a month for the past 5 months and is completely changing the way a $50 billion market does …” . [ 967 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/55165/saas-companies-stall-20m-arr/

Luddites. It’s a term most of you know as being somebody who is backward or uninterested in learning new technology. Actually, the Luddites were worse than this. They were a movement in England during the Industrial Revolution who had the objective of ruining machinery that was used to build products at scale. They thought factories were a threat to custom assembly of products and ultimately to the agrarian way of life (as more people were moving to urban environments). [ 1576 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/…/cant-let-luddites-ruin-global-t…/

Amongst the most often asked questions I get from founders is, “How much money should I raise?” Reflexively founders want to raise as much money as they can because they figure it will give them more resources, better chances of competing and a longer runways before they have to do the often painful job of asking, yet again, for money. Every time you ask for money you’re faced with the possible of feeling literally and figuratively like a failure. [ 1641 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/…/raising-much-money-can-harm-sta…/

I talk about failure a lot because I think it can be tremendously instructive and I think that success without failure often masks underlying lessons. I even prefer to fund entrepreneurs who have experience some level of set-backs in their careers or startups because I think it brings a humility to decision-making that I find healthy. I have experienced many first-time entrepreneurs with too much hubris if fund-raising came easily and press was fawning and employees joined in droves and customer adoption has been rapid. [ 952 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/…/acceptance-failure-critical-sta…/

For the first time in my career, I’ve worked with amazing first-time managers as CEOs. Before I was a CEO, I was a mid-level manager, a director. And then a VP. Across a few start-ups. Before I was first a founder. Those management team weren’t perfect, and I wouldn’t copy everything they did. But at least I got to observe how a few seasoned CEOs managed their executive teams. [ 466 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/54910/e-staff-meetings-1-1s-gotta/

While age ultimately doesn’t matter — results do — in SaaS, starting off as younger-than-average can create stress in a sales and customer-driven environment. But Aaron Levie started Box at 19, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates dropped out at 19-ish, you know all this. Some some hacks: Start with SMBs. It’s easier to get taken seriously, not just as a CEO, but also as a company, with smaller businesses. [ 263 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/548…/4-tips-earn-respect-young-ceo/

If you follow me on Snapchat (msuster) you might already know that I’ve been looking at and investing in a number of companies in the computer vision space. My thesis is that it will become a major I/O computing metaphor or as this field is sometimes referred to HCI (human-computer interaction). Today I am so excited to announce our latest investment in the category — … [ 1915 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/…/computer-vision-become-major-in…/

Customer experience is one of those vague phrases that one hears about digital transformation (itself one of the most common jargon buzzwords of our time). There are two issues associated with customer experience: determining the meaning and quantifying the value or ROI. To understand the meaning, let's turn to two authoritative sources, Dion Hinchcliffe and Paul Greenberg, both of whom are fellow columnists for ZDNet. [ 679 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/…/cio-workshop-roi-customer-exper…/

So, Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $25.6 billion dollars. That headline shocked all of us the other day. But if you step back, it’s not that impressive, the raw number itself. After all, as a public company, LinkedIn was worth $32 billion just a few months earlier, and had been on one heck of a run through the end of 2015: [ 333 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/…/linkedin-acquisition-important-…/

The most important thing is not to chase the shiny penny, assuming you are growing at least 60% Year-over-Year. You’ve done the Impossible. You’ve gotten 50, 100, whatever # of businesses to pay you $1,000,000 a year. There are 10,000 new apps out there. It’s “impossible” to get to $1m. You did it. Now, the #1 biggest mistake I see at this phase is chasing new market segments, new categories, new areas where you have 0 or almost no traction… [ 561 more words. ]

https://www.cloudave.com/5…/easiest-ways-get-1m-arr-10m-arr/